End This!: Lake Placid- The Final Chapter

It's all bite, folks.  Today's film is Lake Placid 4 aka Lake Placid: The Final Chapter.  Is that promise?  I ask because I've been misled by that subtitle when it has come Angel, Walking Tall, Puppet Master, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street (which had The Final Nightmare).  Given the ending, I'm hesitant to trust you all the more, but let's just go with it.  So what new thing does the Fourth film give us?  Do we get to go to Space?   Do we get a Prequel set in Old West Times?  Do we get to Quest for Peace?  Nope.  Instead, we get giant Crocodiles...again.  I was really hoping that we'd get to collect whales, but I guess the same old shit will do.  To find out if the fourth time is the charm, read on...

Remember how Yancy Butler's character was clearly dead at the end of the last film?  Well, she agreed to appear in this dreck, so her character is alive here.  Writing!

After a vague time jump, she is working with the Fish & Game Department, since Poachers aren't often hired to do community service.  There is a new Sheriff, so Colin Ferguson is not in this one.  That will make at least one reader happy.

In the time between films, the lake has been locked down- finally!!!- and work is being done to fix the problem, once and for all.

In Plot B, a Hunter- Robert Englund- sneaks into the place to hunt some big game.  Yeah, I'd be raring to go hunt Crocodiles the size of a 4-Wheeler!

Plot C involves the daughter of the new Sheriff going off on a trip with the Swim Team.  Since the Driver is half-asleep, they manage to drive through the gate to the titular Lake, since the Hunters left it open.

Seriously, that's how they get around the giant Jurassic Park-style gate.  Ugh.

The goofiest kill: this guy getting sneak-attacked by a thirty-foot Crocodile.  Seriously, how is that possible?!?

This is only topped/matched by the stealth Gator from Supergator or the stealth bear from Grizzly.

Is it weird that they didn't give the Crocodile a gullet here?  I mean, if this CG model is accurate, it couldn't possibly eat anything!

I won't SPOIL the whole thing, but I will say that the Climax involves the classic pairing of shitty CG and Main Character Powers.  How is she doing this?!?

I will give you just this one SPOILER though.  It's clear that Butler is Immortal at this point, so you had to see this coming.

The one thing I should note is that this movie ends on some Sequel Bait.  Isn't this the Final Chapter?  Ugh.  The End.

Chomp chomp.  Okay, so is this really the end?  If so, I'm not going to shed a tear.  I would like to say that this film was the final, crowning achievement of the series.  It's not.  It's pretty much just the same film, only with four plots thrown together.  You have the Sheriff's romance plot, the Hunter plot, one half of the group in the Woods plot and the other half of the group in the Woods plot.  The remnants careen together like Nascar debris.  The parts they build up- like the Field & Game guy's son working with Englund- don't really go that far.  This is the usual Syfy Channel film- nothing more, nothing less.  The CG looks decent at times, with a lot of dark textures on the creatures.  I'm not exactly going to praise it for looking life-like, since none of them manage to pull that off.  In the end, this is nothing that you haven't seen, only with Robert Englund and CG Crocodiles.  That said, I'm not completely mad at their efforts for two big reasons...

Next up, the belated 4-Year Anniversary post.  If you want to see me cover something you never thought